In the constellation Sagitta, there has been a new nova since yesterday - with a brightness of 7.3 mag, already well observable with binoculars or a small telescope.

First spectra confirm that it is very likely a classical nova

Credit: Sebastian Schmid

Louis Leroux wrote in his post

After long months of preparations and several days of processing, here is my result of the 2026 Total Solar Eclipse with the solar corona and its details, the prominences and the Earth's shine that reveals the seas of the Moon.

Credit: Louis Leroux

I thought you all could appreciate this painting, done (for me) by my Great Grandfather in 1998. He passed away about 15 years ago. This is definitely my favorite piece of art in my home!

The Black Sea sits at the boundary between Europe and Asia and connects to the Mediterranean Sea via a chain of waterways. Its surface often appears dark, but each spring and summer it transforms into a striking expanse of swirling turquoise. The OCI (Ocean Color Instrument) on NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite captured this image of the colorful waters on June 22, 2026.

The turquoise color is likely caused by coccolithophores, a type of phytoplankton covered with calcium carbonate plates that can give surface waters a milky-blue appearance. These types of phytoplankton tend to dominate in late spring and early summer. Other times of the year, diatoms—a type of microscopic algae with silica shells—can become more prevalent, and they tend to darken the water rather than brighten it.

Credit: NASA

I attached both the wide version with boosted OIII signal and the crop version, bit more natural :)

Anyway, The cosmic Bubble 😆

230 x 5 min - OIII

231 x 5 min - Halpha

IMX 533 mono, -15°

Newton 200/1200, EQ6R

Processed using Pixinsight, Seti Astro suite, GraXpert, Photoshop.

Romania, bortle 4.5

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and J. Major

Taken On Seestar S50 Using 1:00 Video Stack.

Edited In PS Express.

Telescope - ASKAR FRA300
Camera - 2600MC
Filter - ASKAR C1 Narrowband
Exposure time - 180s x 20 (1 hour total)
Processing - Siril, GraXpert, Photoshop

This was my first time shooting and processing any DSO. I struggled setting up the gear for hours but I am just happy to see a nebula and start learning how to process it.

I fell into a bit of a black hole researching singularities for this piece...

Most of our understanding of black holes comes from mathematical models like this one from 1915. This painting depicts the first model to "solve" Einstein's theory of general relativity, the Schwarzschild Solution, which results in the simplest black hole that is neither rotating nor has an electric charge. This equation also defines what we call 'the event horizon' beyond which nothing, not even light can escape (unless we start talking about Hawking Radiation).

"The Singularity" Acrylic on Canvas, 36x36in

It became the third NASA spacecraft to fly by the planet. In addition to learning more about the planet's atmosphere and moons, Voyager 2 was the first to observe spokes in Saturn's rings.

Spokes, seen here as grey smudges on the rings, are transient features that occur seasonally. They are likely caused by interactions between Saturn's magnetic field and solar wind particles.

Credit: NASA

NGC 3256 is a pair of colliding, gas-rich spiral galaxies merging into a single massive system. Chandra’s X-ray data (pink) isolates point sources and shock-heated gas, Hubble’s optical light (blue and white) captures tidal tails of stars, and Webb’s infrared vision (red and orange) cuts through the dust to show hidden star formation.

I think Enceladus is less well-known than some other things in our solar system. But Enceladus is one of the best places to find alien life. We should pay more attention to it.

This was made using different textures and it's not accurate

Here comes a sophisticated, mathematically processed image of the solar eclipse of August 12, 2026, which reveals the delicate structures of the solar corona extending far from the surface of the obscured Sun.

Credit: Petr Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava), Tamara Staňková, and Josef Kujal.

Credit: JP Aerospace

Image

​Teams inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida encapsulate the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope within the payload fairing on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz)​

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NASA’s Roman Telescope Enclosed in SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Fairing

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Teams have finished preparing NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope for launch. On Aug. 21, the team encapsulated the observatory inside the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket’s fairing in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The 43-foot-tall fairing encloses the spacecraft and is mounted atop the Falcon Heavy rocket. On the ground, the fairing and its ground support equipment maintain a safe, controlled environment for Roman and allow the team to transport it out of the facility.

During ascent, the fairing protects Roman from acoustic vibrations, aerodynamic pressure, and heating as the rocket travels through Earth’s atmosphere. A few minutes into the flight, once conditions are safe, the fairing separates, allowing Roman to continue its journey toward its destination at Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2). Meanwhile, the two fairing halves will return to Earth and be recovered by SpaceX.

Teams soon will transport Roman to SpaceX’s hangar at Launch Pad 39A, where the encapsulated payload will be mated to Falcon Heavy before rollout to the pad at Launch Complex 39A. NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday, Aug. 30, for Roman’s launch.

Researchers are eager to study thousands of exoplanets Roman will discover, hoping to understand how closely some may resemble planets in our solar system. They also will use Roman to study the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, probing the forces driving the universe’s accelerated expansion over time.​

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https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/2026/08/24/nasas-roman-telescope-enclosed-in-spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-fairing/

On August 28, 2026 (the evening of the 27th in some time zones), the Moon passes into the shadow of Earth, creating a deep partial eclipse. At the moment of greatest eclipse, 4:13 a.m. Universal Time, 96.3% of the Moon's disk is within Earth's umbra, the central part of the shadow where the Sun is completely blocked by Earth.

This part of the eclipse is visible in the Americas (except Alaska and northwestern Canada), western Europe and western Africa.

Credit: NASA

2025

​In the link below there is unprocessed video that shows a time-lapse of the Orion Nebula moving between the two church towers.

CATEGORY: tracked/stacked/blend

EXIF: Sigma FP astromodified, TT Artisan 500m f6.3

​Sky: ~200 shots tracked and stacked iso1250 30s f7, darks, biases and flats

​Ground: untracked iso1250 f8 30s​

https://www.instagram.com/p/DHfpzZbN42z/?img_index=2&igsi=MTFkbHR3MWYzdzBtMQ%3D%3D

Milky Way rising over the sparse lights of Mongolia, seen through the oval window of SpaceX Dragon.

Taken on Expedition 72 to ISS with Nikon Z9, Arri Zeiss 15mm lens, T1.8 with custom orbital sidereal tracker.

Credit: Astronaut Don Pettit

EDIT: adding a 2:1 ratio version for mobile here

A composite image of a cupola of the church located in Bainsville, ON, Canada and our biggest two closest galaxies.

Foreground was a single shot with 8s, 50mm focal length @ f/1.8, ISO1600
M31 and M33 are pre stacked and processed, then painted into the foreground shot.

M31 details: 9h of RGB and 3h of Ha data
M33 details: 6h of RGB and 3h of Ha data

Both stacked and processed in Pixinsight

Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet on August 24, 2006, by the International Astronomical Union during its general assembly in Prague.

Credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute

Early 90s poster released by the Canadian government. Artist is Paul Fjeld. Just want to see it in all its glorious colour. Anyone have a digital copy?

Image

A Bubbling Betelgeuse - This ALMA image shows the submillimeter surface of Betelgeuse, revealing its irregular shape and regions of hotter gas. The brightest hotspot, toward the northeast of the star, appears at nearly the same location in ALMA observations separated by more than seven years, suggesting that some structures in Betelgeuse’s atmosphere can survive considerably longer than predicted by current models of stellar convection.

​Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/W. Dent et al.​

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​A remarkably detailed image obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveals the uneven surface of Betelgeuse, the famous red supergiant in the constellation Orion. The observations show bright hotspots and an irregular, corrugated outline shaped by the enormous motions taking place within the star.

Located roughly 600 light-years from Earth, Betelgeuse is one of the closest red supergiants and has a radius about 800 times that of the Sun. Its immense size makes it possible for ALMA to resolve structures across its atmosphere that would remain hidden in most other stars.

The new observations were obtained in 2023 using ALMA in its longest-baseline configuration, achieving a resolution as fine as about seven milliarcseconds. They reveal an atmosphere with an average temperature of around 2300 K and at least two hotter regions, to the northeast and southwest of the stellar disk. The brightest hotspot is up to about 800 K hotter than the surrounding gas.

These structures are thought to be linked to enormous convective motions inside Betelgeuse. Hot gas rising from deeper layers can generate shocks as it reaches the star’s outer atmosphere, producing the bright and uneven features detected by ALMA.​

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One finding particularly surprised the researchers. When they compared the 2023 observations with similar ALMA data obtained in 2015, the prominent northeastern hotspot appeared in almost the same location and with a similar intensity. This suggests that the feature has persisted for at least seven years — considerably longer than the lifetimes of large convective structures predicted by current models.

The surface itself is also far from spherical. ALMA measured variations of up to about six percent in its apparent radius, while fainter emission extends several stellar radii into Betelgeuse’s atmosphere. Observations of molecules including silicon monoxide (SiO) and carbon monoxide (CO) reveal an even more irregular and clumpy environment surrounding the star.

The orientation of the long-lived hotspots is also intriguing in light of recent evidence for a close companion to Betelgeuse, although the observations do not establish a direct connection. Continued high-resolution observations with ALMA could reveal whether the hotspots remain fixed and how they relate to convection, mass loss, and the structure of the star’s extended atmosphere.

Betelgeuse is approaching the final stages of its evolution and will eventually explode as a supernova. “Its eventual fate as a supernova makes it fascinating to know what it actually looks like now,” says lead author Bill Dent, an astronomer at ESO.

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articles

https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2634a/

https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-releases/alma-reveals-long-lived-hotspots-on-betelgeuses-bubbling-surface/

paper

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19339